


on the merits of Keeping Your Mouth Shut For Once In Your Life

by infinitebees



Series: tumblr shenanigans [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, i feel so weird posting these tiny fics but its all i can write lately rip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5958513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitebees/pseuds/infinitebees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the prompt "I just told you I liked you but now I’m shy and say “never mind, forget it” and why are you looking at me like that?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	on the merits of Keeping Your Mouth Shut For Once In Your Life

All things considered, it probably wasn’t the best time for a spontaneous confession of love. They’d just fought a high dragon hours ago and they were all still cleaning the blood off their clothes, and besides that Tabris was still seething over Denerim, Leliana was still obsessing over the fact that they’d _really actually_  found _Andraste’s ashes_ (which, to be fair, really was pretty amazing) and Morrigan was meticulously _not_  being interested in said ashes. Zevran was… being Zevran, which meant that he and Sten were embroiled in a very heated argument in which Zevran had absolutely no interest. And Wynne flitted between them all, casting various healing spells and delivering admonitions to please be more careful and stay still and _Alistair do not take off that bandage or so help me Maker I will make that high dragon seem like a gentle beast compared to what’s coming to you_. 

But if there was one thing at which Alistair Theirin was supremely talented, it was bad timing.

So it was that he approached Tabris, wringing his hands and feeling slightly more anxious than usual, and cleared his throat. “Um, Tabris can we - can we talk?”

Tabris looked up from her reading, a simple primer Wynne had found in Denerim and given to her upon learning that she couldn’t read (and really it was impressive that it had taken this long for them to figure it out, a testament to how well the woman could bullshit her way through just about anything). “Can it wait?” she asked, frowning in a way that was more vaguely concerned than irritated. “I’m almost finished with this, and I think I understood, like, half the words.”

What Alistair _meant_  to say was, “Sure, of course, take your time. You’re making great progress.” What he said instead, all in a rush with hardly any space to breathe, was: “No not really because it doesn’t take long to say that I like you I mean that I care for you quite a lot in a different-from-friends way and I’m not very good at reading people but I was hoping that maybe? you’d feel the same way but if you don’t that’s fine too and I’ll just get over it because, you know, we’re adults and all that.”

The silence that followed would have been comical had Alistair not been so busy considering the merits of running off into the woods and falling on his sword right then and there.

“Or,” he said with a nervous laugh, “we could just pretend that I didn’t just say that. I think that’s a good idea. I’ll, um, start dinner? I’m sure Zevran would hardly mind if I took over that tonight.”

And then Tabris was smiling in a way that Alistair couldn’t for the life of him decipher, partly because she looked so damn _radiant_  that it was difficult for him even to think. Alistair quietly hoped that the horde would burst forth from the ground and take him away with them.

“What? What - what - why are you looking at me like that.”

Her grin widened. She looked like the cat that ate the _cow_.

“Iiiiiiii have to go do something else,” Alistair blurted out abruptly, and nearly tripped over his own feet in his rush to hide in his tent, preferably for the next twenty years.


End file.
